


Do the Next Thing

by Stultiloquentia



Category: Angel: the Series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Gen, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-19
Updated: 2009-11-19
Packaged: 2017-10-03 10:03:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,035
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16831
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stultiloquentia/pseuds/Stultiloquentia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Buffy's family includes people she's never met.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Do the Next Thing

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Quinara](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quinara/gifts).



Buffy met them at Gatwick, a rumpled, red-lipped boy and a doe-eyed god with brown curls brushing the shoulders of Spike's duster. "Buffy Summers," she introduced herself, and stuck her hand out, aiming for brisk but warm, to Angel's son. He looked her in the eye, but all she could read in his gaze was that he was trying very hard to be unreadable. His grip was tight, his palm a little sweaty. "Connor."

"I am Illyria," said the god. The way Illyria extended her hand reminded Buffy of the origin of handshakes, the silent agreement in them: I hold no weapon.

Buffy nodded once. "Welcome to London."

*

Illyria was not welcome in London. Willow herself met them in the safehouse foyer, still and quiet and steady in a way that Buffy still found new and a little unsettling in her friend.

"Connor, hey," Willow acknowledged. Connor finger-waved back.

Willow shifted her glance to lock with Illyria's. Illyria looked surprised. "You knew—"

"Mm-hm."

"I shall not apologize. I am what I am, and did not choose my own renaissance."

"Wear your own clothes," Willow said very softly. Buffy shivered.

Illyria's eyes narrowed. Ice crystals bloomed across Fred Burkle's milky skin, and for an instant her hair writhed up, Medusa-like, and settled streaked with cobalt.

She shrugged Spike's coat off her shoulders, leaving it pooled on the tile like a bearskin in a Russian fairy tale, and strode naked into the house.

*

"Here's our map so far. You can use the sidebar to get the grid view and annotations. Right-click opens a new text bubble."

"Can I access other cities besides L.A.?"

"No, I basically gave you a guest account with a few editing privileges, but that's easy to change if you decide to stick around."

Connor slid the mouse around, switched over to satellite view and zoomed in above downtown. Winced.

"You don't have to do any of this tonight," Willow said hastily. "I just wanted to let you know it was here. That we've got people on it, we're taking it seriously." The unspoken 'this time' hung in the air.

"No, it's fine, I'm not tired. I'd like to get started." Buffy thought she heard a bit of 'wishing makes it so' in Connor's voice, but, well, she could sympathize.

As Willow traded places with Connor at the computer, Buffy gave her shoulder a squeeze, because she was looking rough around the edges, too, and Willow caught her hand and squeezed back. Connor was already typing.

*

Buffy collected the duster. It wasn't Spike's old one, she noted with some surprise. It smelled better. She hesitated for a moment at the stairwell, then went to find her other houseguest.

Illyria was out back, in the little walled garden.

Buffy stepped up cautiously and proffered the coat. "If you want this, you should have it," she said. Illyria was perfectly capable of conjuring outfits for her paper-doll body out of thin air; the duster was something else.

Illyria's head gave a weird little sideways yoink as she looked at her. "Angel's sp—son indicated that I should travel in the guise of the shell to avoid notice."

"I know. I'm not talking about Fred. I'm saying you can have the coat."

"Why should I desire it?"

There was a brushed gold zippo on a key chain on Buffy's bedroom dresser. "Some days it's easier to carry your memories on the outside."

Illyria gave Buffy a once-over. "You choose your clothing purposefully. You wrap your power in those—frivolities—to remind yourself of your alliance with humanity."

Buffy sighed and looked down: tan suede skirt, cashmere sweater in a pretty, feminine rose. Boots. All right, the scarf was a little floofy. "Actually, no," she told Illyria. "I am human. And frivolous. I didn't pick these clothes to remind myself of anything. I just like them."

"I do not like anything," said Illyria.

Buffy leaned against the stone wall and bundled up her armful of leather. "That must suck."

After a moment, Illyria leaned, too. Buffy let her ruminate, and contemplated the garden in front of her. Mostly ivy and weeds: until six months ago, the place had been a Council bolthole, one of a handful of donated, underutilized properties that Buffy and a few teenaged minions had de-cobwebbed and de-poltergeisted. Someone must have cared about it once, though; those were roses in the corner, laddering tenaciously up a wooden trellis's old, grey bones.

"I...may have liked Wesley," Illyria allowed.

"You gotta start somewhere."

*

A while later, Buffy saw the light over the kitchen stove flip on. Connor was there, lifting a copper kettle like he was wondering how it plugged into the wall.

He jerked when she opened the door, and the kettle slammed back onto the burner. "Ahh sorry! Jeez, sorry. I'm usually harder to—I'm just right now I'm really—"

"It's okay." Buffy pulled two mugs with touristy slogans from the cupboard and set them on the counter. "Connor, I should have said this before: we'll find them. I promise you, we won't stop until we have answers." Connor looked at her, and he was just a kid no older than Dawn, baffled and weary.

"You loved him, didn't you?"

"I loved them both," Buffy told him seriously. "Love. Still." She couldn't help gentling her voice a little, even though she could tell he wouldn't accept coddling. "No past tenses yet, okay?"

"Okay." He made an awkward, aborted twitch in her direction. A hug impulse, Buffy realized, probably bouncing off her own famous personal space bubble. He'd had a different life, with a mom and a dad who were ordinary and comfy and probably tea drinkers. He had no idea what he had anymore. She made herself reach out and grip his shoulder. "I love them. We'll find them," she said again, and knew it was the right instinct when Connor reached back and clutched her opposite arm, strong, spidery fingers denting her bicep. They stood there, bracing each other, allowing themselves, for a moment, to be braced. He was a pretty steady kid, all things considered. She could feel the not-a-god spying on them from the garden. She could make it work.


End file.
